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The owner of Britain’s biggest energy supplier faces a white-knuckle ride this winter to defend its dividend against further threats in the wake of a financial storm for the utility industry.

Providing it can avoid any further pain, Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, will only narrowly manage to scrape together enough cash to pay its shareholders, its own financial ­advisers have warned.

Analysts at Swiss investment giant UBS, which is advising Centrica on the sale of its nuclear interests, warned that a takeover bid is one of the few scenarios in which shareholders might ­recover value from their investment after years of plummeting share prices.